Quarter-Turn
by labonsoirfemme
Summary: It's early morning, and Greer finds herself in the kitchens, Leith at her back, learning how to knead bread dough. Greer x Leith.


Am I the only one that feels like Leith is more than a simple kitchen boy? He knows how to read and doesn't seem like the type to listen to Greer talk about needing to marry for status only to kiss her if he doesn't have any.

So that's what I ~allude to~ throughout this.

* * *

Greer's always been a light sleeper. The only time she's ever had a bed to herself was in the few years before Caitrin was born, and she's sure that must have been the most well-rested time in her life. Greer and Lola share a bed here in France, and while Greer loves her dearly, she does _not_ love Lola's dreamtalk and snores.

She'd felt claustrophobic in bed: surrounded by the heavy bedcurtains and Lola rolling into the middle of the mattress, crowding Greer towards its edge. So she'd slipped out into the quiet bedchamber, pulled a heavy tartan around her shoulders, and opened the door to the corridor as quietly as possible. The castle still slumbered, save for the nearly-silent scurry of servants carrying wood to place in grates, and Greer had been glad for it. In a short time, the whole castle would be moving, each sound ricocheting off of flagstones and the rock in the halls.

The outside grounds lack the eerie silence of the halls of the castle, what with the calls of birds and the lap of the water against the shore. The horizon is just beginning to pinken now; the air turning from dark black to a misty grey, and with the smell of the forest on the breeze, it feels like Scotland, like home. Greer watches the pink and orange of the skyline creep higher, catch on the frothy clouds and fade the stars one by one.

"What're you doing up this early?" a man asks from behind her, the lilting roll of his voice making his use of the formal pronoun seem warm and familiar all the same. She knows that voice, and knows it well, because she's already spent a night letting it wash over her, chasing it down with wine and the leftovers of a picnic basket he'd put together for her to eat with another man.

"Couldn't sleep," Greer replies, shrugging a shoulder. "Lola is an active dreamer, I'm afraid."

Leith turns to her in surprise, brows drawing together. "You sleep with another person?"

"Of course," she laughs. "I mean, just _look_ at the size of the castle. D'you think there are many beds to spare? Don't _you_ share a bed with someone else?"

"Not since I was a boy. Sorry to ruin your ideas of poor kitchen boys huddling together for warmth," he teases gently, when Greer's eyebrows rise high on her forehead. There's a strange way in which he leans on _poor kitchen boys_, like he knows something she doesn't, but Greer can't make heads or tails of it. Truly, she's just imagining what it must be like to have a whole mattress to spread out on.

"Must be nice, sleeping alone," she sighs, tugging the wrap higher onto her shoulders.

A slow smile stretches across Leith's face. "Quite lonely, actually," he replies with a slow blink that makes something turn funny in Greer's chest. "C'mon, though. I've got to get back to the kitchens. It's warmer in there, anyway." He turns his forearm outwards, uncurling his fist, and for half a beat Greer thinks that he's going to offer her his arm, as if he were well-bred and allowed to do so, but he jerkily changes its direction, rolls his shoulder, like it's stiff and needs to be stretched out.

_What a strange boy,_ Greer thinks, following his footsteps towards the servitude buildings sitting a good distance away from the castle proper.

As soon as they enter the kitchen, he jogs over to the well-fired oven to open the door and peer inside "You've already been here this morning?" she asks in amazement.

"Of course," he replies distractedly, patting around on the countertops around for a towel. "I was just taking a walk while these browned up." The tiny loaves of bread on the tray are indeed a lovely golden brown, with shiny crackled tops. He bats her hand away when she reaches out for one. "You'll burn your mouth, silly girl. Give them time to cool down and then I'll turn my back and let you sneak one."

Greer rolls her eyes and sets her chin on her fist. He was right – the kitchen was comfortably warm from the oven. In the interest of propriety, she'd pulled a light gown on over her nightrail before she'd left her bedchamber, and even though she's technically not _properly_ girdled underneath it, she barely thinks twice before she pulls her tartan off her shoulders. _He's only a kitchen boy_, she reminds herself, watching him mess around on the other side of the room for a few moments. _He wouldn't know anything about a lady's dresses, anyway_.

But when Leith turns back around with a large bowl in his hands, his eyes widen at the sight of her casual gown, and his throat bobs with a thick swallow. He takes the two paces to the table in silence, only saying, "You look nicer like that," after he's carefully weighed his words.

"Like what?" Greer says with a light laugh.

He shrugs and reaches into a canister, measures out some flour, and dumps it into the bowl. "Without all the jewels and baubles and brocade." She doesn't know what to say to that, and just watches him mix a pinch of salt into the bowl, stir it together with his hands. Then he reaches back into the canister and dusts the table with more flour and upends the bowl. A pale blob of dough falls out of it and onto the table with a splat.

"Why does bread need to be worked like that, I wonder?" she asks a moment later, after the awkward moment has passed. Leith's been kneading the dough, and she's been _watching_ him knead the dough. His shoulders rise and fall, right, left, right, left, the heels of his hands shoving the dough into the surface of the table.

He chuckles and flips the dough to get at the underside. "To make it light, m'lady. When you work at it, it goes from a wet sponge to smooth and silky. You smell that? Warm, foamy? That's the yeast. It has to work its way through the dough, make it all supple-like, so that it'll rise like we want it to. Work it too long, and it'll get dry and tough; but if you don't work it long enough, it'll bake heavy, like a stone."

At some point, Greer's mouth has gone slack, listening to him talk about _bread_ of all things, and she's not even watching his hands anymore, because he caught her gaze when he was describing the smell of yeast, and he hasn't looked away since. "Oh," is all she says from where his velvety voice sent her into a slouch against the edge of the table.

"Do you want to try?" he asks.

"Try what?"

"This," he says, jerking his head downwards.

Greer shakes her head with a smile. "Oh, no, I don't know how."

"I'll show you. It's easy. You won't ruin it." Greer bites her lip, and he grins at her. "Go get an apron so you don't muss your dress."

They hang on hooks by the door, and Greer mimics how she's seen servant girls wearing them before. She has to bring the strings around to tie them in front of her waist, but it gets on well enough eventually. Leith guides her to stand in front of him with a hand on her hip, and Greer nervously grips the table.

He must feel the anxiety thrumming through her body, because he says: "Don't worry. Guillaume is going to the market before coming in, and no one else is due for a few hours yet." She sighs and nods, and he reaches over to drag the flour canister closer. "Get your hands in there," he orders. "Don't be shy about it. It'll stick otherwise."

Then his arms bracket each side of her body, fingers fiddling with the ball of dough. "The first thing to know is that it's not going to break unless you're actually trying to break it. Second, once you find a rhythm, it's actually not a bad way to pass the morning. So—quarter-turn, then grab the bottom and fold it inwards, like this, pressing down with your hand. This part right here, that's what you use," he says, tapping the fleshy base of his thumb. He does it a few more times, murmuring over her shoulder, and then tells her to go ahead, try it, and sets his palms down on the surface of the table.

She's tentative at first, surprised at how smooth it feels, at how it seems to move on its own when she folds up the bottom edge. "Firmer," he says, playfully bumping the back of her shoulder with his, and the next time, she is. "Good. Just like that."

It flows, once she gets the pattern down, and she finds her eyes straying to his hands, still pressed to the table on either side of the work surface. He's got scars on the backs of them, and up his forearms—burn marks, cuts from knives—but his fingers are long and un-broken, his nails un-split and clean but for the flour worked up under the edges of them. He takes long, slow breaths, chest brushing against her back when she rocks backwards with each knead of the bread. She'd been hyper-aware of his presence when she'd begun, but he's done nothing untoward this whole time, and it's been nice to have him there to stumble back into, solid and unyielding, when she's underestimated how much force she'd pushed down with. So she lets the warmth of the oven against her front and Leith against her back lull her into a semi-meditative state, the back of her neck dampening from the heat and exertion.

Eventually, he touches her wrist to still her movements. "That should do it," he murmurs against her ear, quieter than before. "Do you want to put it in to rise?"

She nods, feels her hair catch on the rough wool of his shirt. "Sure."

He hums appreciatively—she must have said the right thing. "Take the bowl again and some oil…no, the other bottle. Pour some in," he directs, reaching around to place a finger on the bottom of the bottle and tilt it until he's satisfied with the amount. "Now take that cloth there and wipe it around the inside. All the way up the sides, because it's going to expand and we don't want it to stick."

"I put it in now?" Greer asks, placing her hands on the dough and looking over her shoulder. His blue eyes, dark and heavily-lidded, meet hers, and he nods. So she moves the ball of dough into the bowl, and puts a towel over the top like he tells her to.

Only then does he push away from the table, and it feels like a cold draft across Greer's back. He takes the bowl across the room and sets it on top of the oven. "The heat will help it rise," he tells her when she tilts her head with a tiny furrow appearing between her eyes. "So? Not so difficult was it?"

She shakes her head and looks down, dragging a finger through the flour left on the table. "No. I liked it, actually." She sees him press the fingertips of a hand into the table as he comes around the corner of it, and then he's right in front of her, tilting her chin up with a knuckle. He murmurs her name, and _she's_ the one that rocks up onto the balls of her feet to press her lips to his.

This kiss she's ready for, and it's less furtive, more searching, than their last (_her first_). She clenches her hands in his shirt when he licks into her mouth, sighs when he slides his tongue alongside hers, coaxing her along. He's patient when she falls out of alignment; uses sure lips and gentle teeth to pull her back in. His flour-dusted hands hover over her shoulders and he murmurs "I don't want to get you dirty" against her mouth.

She pulls away and looks at his chest, where her fingers have pressed dough and flour into the weave of his shirt. "Oh—I'm—I'm so sorry," she mumbles, brushing at it, trying to get it out, but only making it worse. He laughs and covers her hands with his.

"Don't worry about it," he says, lips stretching into a grin again. "Being covered in food is part of my job."

She looks back up into his eyes, her breath catching at the brightness of his eyes in the morning light, and suddenly she realizes how well-lit the room is now. "Oh, no," she hisses, fumbling with the tie of her apron. Leith looks out the window, sees the sun hovering over the horizon, and springs into action. When she turns around from hanging her apron up, he meets her with a pot of water and tells her to scrub her hands in it, make sure she gets under her nails, too. "How do I look?" she finally asks in a strained voice, patting her dress down with frantic hands.

"You look fine." Leith dries off his own hands and picks up her tartan. "You've had a lovely morning walk," he murmurs, swinging it 'round her shoulders, "watched the sun rise over the water, and had a turn in the gardens while they were nice and quiet."

Greer takes a deep breath, letting it out slowly when he tucks her hair behind her ears, lets his thumbs linger on the corners of her jaw. "Thank you," she whispers, tilting her head back a bit, and doesn't protest when he tugs her forward by her tartan, slants his mouth over hers one last time. The lap of his tongue against the seam of her lips as he rocks back has her wondering _why_ she'd waited so long to just kiss a boy.

The first time she'd fled from the kitchen after he'd kissed her, her knees had been shaking from the adrenaline and shock (_and lust, as she'd looked back on it_), but this time, it's calmed her frazzled nerves, and she grips the door handle with sure hands. "I'm here every morning," Leith tells her with a wink, and she rolls her eyes at him over her shoulder, slipping out the door without even a word of goodbye.

She'd worried for nothing, because the other girls are barely even awake, still rubbing the sleep from their eyes. Lola yawns widely from Mary's settee; even morning-bird Aylee blinks slowly at her when she enters Mary's bedchamber. Mary buys her "morning stroll" story easily as she tugs on her robe and waves for the girls to follow her down the hall to the table around which they eat their breakfast.

It's Kenna who snags her elbow when the other girls' backs are turned and raises an eyebrow. "You've got flour under your chin, Greer," she whispers, and wipes it away with her thumb.

Greer's cheeks flush. "Oh, I just—"

But Kenna puts a finger over her lips with a wink and links her arm through Greer's. "Come and find me after breakfast and tell me _everything_."


End file.
